Two slain, one badly hurt at Pontiac’s Palamar Motel

Two people were found dead and a third was “gravely injured” Tuesday at the Palamar Motel in Pontiac, Ill., which reportedly is now used as apartments, reported the Bloomington Pantagraph.

The newspaper reported:

Police were called Tuesday morning to check the well-being of the occupants of Room 239 at the motel, which now serves as a long-term rooming complex on Pontiac’s west side, said Woolford. The room is on the second floor of the south side of the motel. […]

The hotel, 213 S. Ladd St., is next to the Fraher Ford dealership. Employees at the shop said they did not hear or see anything unusual until police and rescue personnel arrived about 11 a.m. […]

The longtime motel that once served Route 66 motorists now has rental apartments.

“Historically, it’s been a long time since it was in its heyday, but it does have a storied history,” he said.

Police would not release the names of the victims, pending notification of their families and completing the investigation. The Pontiac Daily Leader said the dead are a mother and her son, shot to death, and the surviving victim also was her son.

The Daily Leader hinted it was possibly a double murder-suicide.

The Pantagraph said the police chief called it an “isolated incident” and clearly tried to downplay public fears. But there’s nothing comforting about a double homicide.

A Pantagraph story in 2007 interviewed a fellow who recalled the Palamar’s good ol’ days:

But Gerald Hillyer remembers The Palamar’s heyday, when Saturday night crowds jammed in to hear big bands swing the adjacent supper club where he tended bar.

“We’re actually halfway between Chicago and Springfield, and a lot of the politicians would come in here,” Hillyer, 77, recalled as he stood in the broken parking lot of the property his parents once owned. “It was a nice watering-hole break.”

According to one online source, the Palamar was built in 1968.

(Vintage postcard of Palamar Motel via 66Postcards.com)

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